Thursday, May 18, 2017

A Not-So-Real-Life Russian Spy Story as a Goofy Lesson in Fiction Writing

Mission Implausible: The Hunt on Moscow’s
Arbat for a Double-Crossing
Master Mole and His Murky Minions

(When I was working deep cover as a super-spy double agent in Moscow,

I made sure never to take photos in places that might reveal my location.

Instead, I stuck to generic public places like this anonymous church downtown.

A nondescript photo like this one could have been taken . . . well . . . anywhere.

Trust me. We professionals know what we're doing.)

1. Introduction to a Tall Tale of Espionage

[writing tip: a story
needs a main character with a mission]

At the
considerable risk of spilling vital national secrets of the world’s two
foremost nuclear powers, I hereby clear my cluttered conscience and disclose a
sort of sordid incident from my chess-and-checkered past. Suspend your copious incredulity, dear
reader, for truth is stranger than fiction.

About a
year ago, contrary to common beliefs, stereotypes, and media headlines, the
governments of the United States and the Russian Federation joined forces to
employ my super-subtle spycraft services in search of a double-crossing double
agent who had played both sides for suckers by selling top-secret information
from these two countries to each other at discount rates, angering not only the
Yanks and the Russkies, but also the Chinese, the Saudis, the Iranians, the
North Koreans, the Bangladeshis, the Tasmanians, and even the Peruvian shoe salesman
and the Alaskan ice-cream pusher on the corner of Red Square, thereby forcing
all of them to drop their prices on foreign intelligence tidbits just to keep
themselves fed in a world awash with scandalous and juicy gossip.

My mission,
should I choose to accept it (and I did), was to go under deep cover and
infiltrate the notorious tourist haven on the Arbat, a famous street in Moscow, where the
diabolical mole had been rumored to be operating with his fickle fiendish friends
and feral femme fatales.

At the
outset, I chose for my cover a counterintuitive anti-cover—myself. This was a brilliant stroke of genius not
usually practiced among professional spooks, fibbies, coppers, Chekists, forensic
fishermen, or even nephrologists, who for all their special skills lack the
creative undercover couth that empowers me to shoot my padded fees through the
vaulted ceiling. After all, not even
your common, average imbecile would ever suspect that yours truly could
possibly pass himself off as a world-class operator in the Russian underworld. Which is a lesson to everyone not to underestimate your local neighborhood geek.

(The Russians gave me a bulldog to assist me.

I code-named him "Boris."

But I didn't trust him. His collar was bugged, and not just with fleas.

On the other hand, he was a fascinating conversationalist

whose Russian was superb

.

One of his ancestors foiled an assassination plot against Peter the Great

by going undercover with a group of Cossacks. He disguised himself as a horse.)

2. The Obligatory Hooligan Scene

[writing tip: a story
needs conflict]

When I
reached the famous lane, I immediately encountered trouble—a handful of soft
and furry toughs on the hard streets of Moscow.
Definitely mercenaries of the mole.
Dressed up as cutesy cartoon characters, they played nice and
cozy at first, sidling up to me and my son like Santa Claus solicitors at a
charity dinner. But I kept my piano-playing
fingers firmly wrapped around my wallet.

It was all fun and games until they put my unsuspecting son into a
headlock, at which point we drew upon our years of mindless American TV to cowboy-karate-chop
our way out of that dicey situation.

Unfortunately,
my son was traumatized. He will never
look at Cheburashka or the Russian Winnie the Pooh the same. Few crimes are so atrocious as corrupting
children’s innocence, especially via cuddly cartoons. Such were the conscience-less monsters I was
up against.

3. The Obligatory Female Love Interest

[writing tip: many
stories benefit from a subplot, especially a romantic
one]

Though
usually impervious to femme fatales, I did divert my poor, beguiled eyes to
look upon a Russian doll of full Siberian proportions, who proudly stood within
a window of a shop, flaunting her considerable talents for all the world to
see. I coveted this cute, curvaceous cuddlemonger
and cried within my melting masculine heart, “She shall be mine!”

My goal, of
course, was to transfer this buxom beauty of a plentiful possession to my lovely wife.

A stackable
matriozhka doll of Biblical enormousness! A wonder of the Russian world to rival Noah’s Ark or the Trojan Horse! Hers was a face
to melt a million male American hearts and sink a thousand Yankee ships. What a big and beautiful girl! And she redefined with pleasing modesty the
very concept of dangerous curves. (Just
try standing on her head or shoulders without falling off and bruising yourself.)

I named her
Anya—or, more affectionately, Annushka (pronounced AH-noosh-kuh).

I wasn’t
sure how I was going to stuff her into the overhead compartment on the plane
home. Truth be told, I couldn’t even
smash her through the outer door of the fuselage. “Annushka,” I told her, “you simply must lay
off the greasy cheese-and-potato pirozhki. You can blimp up like a true American after
we get to the States.”

In the end,
I ignored the handful of petty passengers who shrieked their foul objections to
my delicate trinket, and I bribed one of Aeroflot’s supermodel stewardesses to
turn a blind eye while I hoisted Anya onto the top of the plane and tied her
down with shoelaces.

Alas, when
I landed in New York, my Annushka, notwithstanding her aerodynamically smooth
and impeccable skin, had disappeared.
Back home in Provo, I bent an elbow at my kitchen table to comfort my
weeping soul with a cordial cup of lactose-free cocoa, and my mind turned to the timeless
tune of an immortal tavern song, the chorus of which I belted out as loudly as I could while I swung back and forth, sloshing my frothy cocoa around my manly mug with reckless abandon:

My Anya lies over the ocean.

My Anya lies over the sea.

I lost her in all that commotion.

Oh where, tell me where could she
be?

Bring back, bring back, bring back
my Anya to me, to me!

Bring back, bring back, bring back
my Anya to me!

Oh,
Annushka, you gentle soul. Perhaps you
were for my eyes only.

But much of
that mushy side-plot happened later. With this forward-flash now behind us, we must cut back to the action on the Arbat.

4. The Obligatory Encounter with Another Agent

[writing tip: some
stories could use more than one subplot;

or, alternatively, a focal character could use an ally now and then]

I knew from
the run-in with the fulsome femme fatale that I was getting close to the mole's infamous lair, but I was
distracted once more when I ran into my long-lost brother, Michael.

It turned out he was working under deep cover as well, which
explains the otherwise inexcusable inversion of his jersey number. With the standard “23,” everyone would have
spotted him immediately, but the “32” made him all but unrecognizable. Good thing, too, because he and I look so
much alike that if his cover had been blown, then my own cover, a fortiori,
would probably have been blown also.

5. The Obligatory Dramatic and Danger-Loaded
Climax

[writing tip: end your story with a climax and a resolution]

Anyway, to
make a short story shorter, I finally tracked down a muddle-minded munchkin minion
masquerading as a master maven marketer in Moscow’s major mecca for macho American money-spending tourists like myself.

(Don't be fooled by the cute costume.

This agent of the mole is a consummate killer,
a cunning, conniving, creamy-smooth cutthroat,
squishy on the outside with poison on the inside.
I assigned him the code name "Twinkie.")

I closed in and sent the signal to my manhandling Russian case handlers, who swooped down from silent helicopters to bag this clown and haul
him to the Lubyanka, where we willy-nilly waterboarded the four-eyed chubby
cheese puff until the yellow devil squealed and ratted out his ratfink boss,
the mole—whose identity I cannot disclose because of national security reasons. But he was bad, trust me. Aldrich Ames bad. Robert Hanssen bad. And I got to him before the Russians did. Smuggled him out on a U.S. Navy mini-sub that sailed right down the Oka, Volga, and Don rivers to the Black Sea, where it squeezed past that nice new bridge to Crimea and rendezvoused with an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean.
But I stayed behind in Moscow, of course, for the sake of Annushka.
Poor girl.

(These three manhandlers from the Russian intelligence

services helped me to waterboard the minion.

Nice guys if you're on their side, but you better not mess with them
unless you're armed with light sabers and nuclear hand grenades.)

As anyone
can see from the indisputable photographic evidence I present here, this account of
high-level international espionage is well-grounded in hard, undeniable facts,
and probably deserves a Pulitzer in investigative journalism, considering the
magnitude of the issues involved.

(After nabbing the mole, I returned to Red Square

and reported directly to the Russian president, who went

undercover himself as a guard so that I would not have to

enter the Kremlin compound. Look closely, and you'll see that it's really him.

I communicated my results by blinking at him from a distance,

and he confirmed receipt of my message by standing absolutely still

for a long time. Talk about an unbreakable code!

Then I passed along this top-secret photo of him to my true bosses

at the CIA station house, which at the time was disguised as a McDonald's.

He used me, I used him, we double-crossed each other—

it's all just business, nothing personal, standard operating procedure,the way the game is played in the big leagues.)

With my
mission accomplished and both countries a little safer—and I do love both, though my passport shall always remain true blue—I returned to my obscure life in the U.S. under my safe
generic alias of John Q. Public, a pseudonym that I can take with me almost
anywhere, especially because it translates so well into other languages—e.g.
Ivan K. Publikov (Russian); Jean Q. Publique (French); Juan Q. Publico
(Spanish); Johann Q. Publische (Germanesque if not quite pure German); Giovanni Pubblico (Italian); etc. For the time being, I’m at a loss
regarding possible Chinese, Arabic, and Swahili equivalents, so I’ll limit my sophisticated
spycraft travels to the U.S., Russia, and maybe parts of Europe.

But should
my country call upon me once again to hunt down minion miscreants in Moscow,
I’ll be ready.

(Nothing beats the satisfaction of a tough job well done—which
reminds me of the steak dinner I was served at the CIA awards
banquet. But that spooky culinary scandal is a story for another day.)

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About Aaron Jordan

Aaron Jordan is originally from Salt Lake City, Utah. After serving an LDS mission in Russia during the nineties, he studied history and law intending to work for the federal government as a diplomat or an analyst, but ultimately the heavens harbored other plans. He lived in Virginia for eleven years until his wife’s career brought the family to BYU. Through his writing, he strives to entertain, to educate, to edify, and to give people more reasons to smile.